


Round the Back Way

by nonelvis



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:13:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22267720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonelvis/pseuds/nonelvis
Summary: “I’ve just had the most infuriating 77 years of my life,” the Master says. “Have you any idea how hard it is to live through the twentieth century? The places I’ve escaped from ...”
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 199





	Round the Back Way

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to Platypus for the beta. And really and truly, that joke in there that sounds vaguely familiar was written five days before "Orphan 55" aired.

_“I’ve just had the most infuriating 77 years of my life,” the Master says. “Have you any idea how hard it is to live through the twentieth century? The places I’ve escaped from ...”_

* * *

The Master never tells the Doctor how he got out of Paris in 1943, not even when she asks as sweetly as she can, a finger trailing through his chest hair as they lie in bed in Prague 1968, or thereabouts. He finds he’s not losing track of the time so much as losing hope he’ll be able to shortcut his way through history the way he’s shortcut everything else, inconsequential things like “morals” and “ethics” and “trying not to murder entire civilisations.” The real issue is that he hasn’t sensed himself yet, much less his TARDIS, though in fairness, the entire time period in which he first started visiting this miserable planet regularly remains maddeningly hard to pin down.

“Why should I tell you, Doctor?” he says. “It’s much more fun letting you guess. And I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of knowing whether you caused me anything more than a minute’s worth of difficulty.”

“Just curious,” she replies, pressing a kiss to his chest. Another one, a little lower, and another below that, and the Master begins to stir again.

“Stop that. It tickles.”

“Oh, does it?” Lips trailing over his hipbone, grazing a tender bruise from earlier activities. “What, is that something a manly man of your manly prowess can’t handle?”

“Don’t ... oh ... I won’t tell you. Not a word.”

“I don’t need words,” she says, and draws him into her mouth.

* * *

The Soviets break down the door to his flat less than an hour later to arrest him for stealing weapons. At least they don’t send him to Siberia this time.

* * *

In 1973, he flies from Amsterdam to London, or tries to, what with the plane suffering mechanical difficulties shortly after takeoff. The airline, regrettably, cannot accommodate him on the next flight, or the flight after that, or the one hardly anyone takes because it’s so early in the morning, and he finds himself forced to garrotte the counter clerk with a luggage strap to gain access to her ticketing system.

Also regrettably, the Dutch police do not take kindly to semi-recreational murder. They tell him the crime was reported by a blonde British woman who saw him standing over a pair of prone, high-heeled feet behind a counter and suggested they check closed-circuit footage to confirm her suspicions, although the woman has since disappeared without a trace, and would the Master happen to know anything about that? No? Yes, sir, that is a very interesting story you have to tell about this woman having a time machine. Perhaps you can work on a more plausible version of it while you’re held in jail.

* * *

By 1978, the Master has long since acquired a reputation as a man who can get things done for the right price, provided you don’t mind if a few extra bodies occasionally turn up along the way. Murder and mayhem for hire would normally be well beneath him, but a Time Lord without a time machine still needs an especially lavish roof over his head, possibly ones in multiple parts of the world, and even the Master’s hypnotic skills don’t always work on the more aggressive real estate sharks.

His Tokyo clients have, as promised, left him a rifle and sniper scope in an otherwise empty flat. Beneath the rifle, however, is a folded note on Hello Kitty stationery, where he finds a hot-pink scrawl:

> _You don’t have to do this._
> 
> _xoxoxo_

He scowls and double-checks the rifle and scope to make sure they’re the models he specified before heading out of the flat to the stairwell leading to the roof. Through the stairwell door, propped up on the very first step, is another folded Hello Kitty note:

> I _don’t want to do this either, but I will._
> 
> _xoxoxoxoxoxo (in case you need more)_

Pink and white paper shreds flutter behind him as he scales the last three flights between him and the roof, a clear shot at the izakaya across the street he’ll need to take in precisely ten minutes. One more door between him and his goal. And one more note, this time neatly taped on the door, right at his eye level.

> _Final warning._
> 
> _no kisses, now you’re making me cross_

He doesn’t hesitate, ripping the door open and striding onto the rooftop. Where he’s immediately greeted by four policemen who tell him in flawless English that they would like to have a few words with him about the consequences of disobeying Japanese gun control laws.

* * *

It is the mid-1980s, probably, and while the Master finally makes it to England, it’s as if someone has placed an invisible, impenetrable bubble around London and its surrounding countryside. Most likely, of course, that someone is his former self, distantly sensing his newer self’s presence and desire to hijack the TARDIS, and therefore taking precautionary measures dramatically more effective than the ones he tends to put into place when they involve the Doctor.

He snarls at himself from wherever Weatheringstonehampshire-on-Flange is, never mind whether that’s the right name for the place; all these quaint English villages sound alike. He may be an undetermined distance away from his goal, but at least he’s within stomping distance of the nearest pub, a stone cottage flanked by fields dotted with puffy, lackadaisical sheep. 

Inside, the Doctor is already seated at a corner table with an extra pint of bitter.

“You!” the Master says, pointing at her. “You did this! What right do you have to prevent a paradox I need to create?”

“Projecting again, are we? I haven’t done a thing. You have, and you know it.”

He can’t quite see her eyeroll in the dim pub lighting, but he can practically smell it. He drags out the chair, slumps in it, and drains half the beer before slamming the glass back on the table. The rest of it is gone a scowl later, and the Doctor silently gets up and fetches another pint for him.

“I know the slow path can be frustrating,” she says. “It won’t last forever, though, promise. Maybe take it as a learning opportunity, yeah? I know you can if you try. You did, once.”

“I’m not her anymore,” the Master hisses. “You tried to make her like you, weak and soft, and what’s the word, begins with a P ...”

“‘Principled’?”

“No. _Pathetic,_ that’s it. And ‘predictable,’ just like I know you’ve been blocking my every move.”

“Well. Not every one. Just the ones that involve you harming people. When I can.”

“I’ll have my revenge eventually, Doctor. And you’ll know when I do. Right up to the moment when you die.”

She takes a slug of her own beer and pushes back from the table. “All right, then. Why not now? You’re here, I’m here, we’ve literally got all the time in the world; go on, have a go at me. Outside, though, if you please; the Fairfields won’t take kindly to us smashing up their lovely pub.”

He’s on his feet before she is, his chair tumbling to the ground as he stalks to the back door. The Doctor is probably picking it up behind him, apologising to the stout silver-haired couple behind the bar, and he’ll be ready for her when she emerges: feet planted, fists tight, the exact correct level of mania in his grin, which he calibrates while he waits for her.

The Doctor emerges from the doorway a few moments later, shucking her coat and tossing it over a stack of wooden pallets, and the Master’s fist connects with her face even before the coat lands, sending her staggering backwards into the back of the building. “Yes!” he cries. “That’s what I’ve missed. No laser screwdriver. No swords. Just _us,_ bare-knuckled until we bleed.”

“That’s how we always are. Maybe you haven’t been paying attention.” She shakes her head, massaging her jaw. “Come on, give it another go. See if you get lucky again this time.”

He charges at her with a roar, but she dodges nimbly to one side, arm twirling behind her like the bullfighter’s cape he suspects she’d have used if she could. The Master whirls to face her as she shuffles opposite him, arms and feet in a defensive stance that doesn’t deter him from throwing another punch the Doctor barely manages to escape before connecting with an uppercut to the Master’s chin, snapping his head backwards with surprising force.

She’s harder-edged than she looks, then. Good. Now he doesn’t have to hold back.

His next punch misses her face, but she fails to protect her midriff for half a second, leaving it open for a gut blow that sends her staggering into the wooden pallets. The Master snatches the Doctor’s coat from where she’d left it and tosses it over her head, distracting her for long enough to tackle her to the ground and straddle her. He pulls it from her face with one hand while grabbing her by the throat with the other.

“Beating you will never stop feeling good, Doctor.”

“Yeah,” she says, shifting below his groin, “I can tell you’re enjoying it.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not.”

“I didn’t say that.” A crescent-moon grin, sharp and wild. “But that doesn’t mean you’ve won.”

She slides one hand out from her side and hits him full between the legs with the base of her palm. The Master howls, clutching himself and releasing his hold on the Doctor long enough for her to slither out from beneath him and grab him by the back of the collar. 

“You don’t have to be perfect,” she says, her lips grazing his ear, warm breath tickling the side of his neck. “You just have to mind your manners for a bit longer, never mind how much more, and then we can have this discussion again. And you have to leave your other selves alone, though it sounds like this one’s got that under control.”

The Master’s groin is still throbbing for more reasons than one, but he manages to free himself and scramble to his feet. The Doctor mirrors him, hands loose at her sides, hair frizzing, clothes spattered with mud and dirt.

He lunges for her, and this time, she doesn’t fight back, letting him press her up against the back of the pub, his face millimetres from hers. “I don’t have to mind my manners,” he says. “I don’t have to listen to you. It’s the other way round. I am the Master, and you will obey me.”

“Yeah,” she says, “you keep saying that, but here I am, buying you a drink, handling all the foreplay, and in about a minute and a half, I’d say, two tops, you’re going to be shagging my brains out.”

His eyes narrow at her. She stares back, fearless. And this time, when her hand touches the front of his trousers, it’s a firm but knowing slide over his length, and a finger snapping open the top button.

He licks dirt and sweat from her neck while she laughs low in her throat, pushes his trousers and underwear below his waist, and cups him in her hand, two fingers gliding up him slowly as he hardens beneath her touch. He tilts up her chin, holding her in place while he bites his way along her jawline until he finally reaches her mouth, drawing blood from her lower lip while she squirms beneath him and undoes her own trousers.

The Master draws back, spins the Doctor around, shoves her trousers down and presses her neck into the pub wall. She’s breathing hard, bracing herself at the wall with both hands, but she’s got the same crescent-moon grin on her face as before.

He tugs her waist towards him. Pulls her panties aside and pushes himself into her from behind, hard and fast. He yanks one of the Doctor’s blood-spattered, bruised hands down for a moment, swift enough to make her cry out in surprise, and savours the blood on his tongue until she gasps.

“I told you,” she says between panting breaths. “Ninety-eight seconds.”

“Shut up,” he hisses. “Be still. _Get fucked._ ”

“I can do one of those.” 

He growls, buries his teeth at the nape of her neck until she moans. Her other hand busies itself between her own legs as the Master keeps driving into her, the salt and blood and grime on the Doctor’s skin spurring him onwards.

The Doctor stumbles briefly, but her hand keeps moving. She must be close. So is he.

He’s got one last needle to prick her with. Time to use it.

“Tell me, Doctor,” he whispers in her ear, “did you visit Gallifrey yet?”

Her head whips back to glare at him.

“Ah,” he says more cheerfully, “I see that you did. Then you got my message.”

It’s hard to get the words out when the pain on her face is so delicious, a spike of energy straight from his brain to his cock. He lets her dangle, waiting for him to finish his thought, while he makes the last few deep, deliberate thrusts he needs.

When he’s literally about to tumble over, he finally continues.

“What I did had to be done. They deserved it. I’d do it all again. And – _ahhh_ ” – he slumps on her back as he finishes, his head spinning in delirium that makes his final words to her that much sweeter – “when you find out the truth ... when you realise I was right all along ... when you pledge yourself to me for what I did ...”

He withdraws, tugs her head back by the hair, and stares straight into her eyes. “... I’m going to kill you anyway.”

He could almost come again just from the look the Doctor gives him.

She straightens herself up with the minimum amount of effort, snatches her coat from the ground, and stalks away without a word. Not that her silence matters, because the Master hasn’t stopped laughing since the Doctor first yanked herself free of him.

When a constable passes by to investigate the noise, the Master doesn’t even argue. He simply pulls up his trousers, and fastens them, and holds out his hands for arrest, still laughing.


End file.
